Star Alliance has been named the World’s Leading Airline Alliance in this year’s World Travel Awards. The annual awards cover multiple categories and are awarded based on a worldwide poll of qualified executives working within travel and tourism, and the consumer travel buyer. The awards serve to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all sectors of the global travel and tourism industry. Earlier, the Star Alliance’s branded airport lounge at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) was recognized as the best in North America by the World Travel Awards. The lounge at LAX is one of eight such lounges globally. “We are grateful for the continued recognition from travel and tourism executives and from the World Travel Awards organisation,” said Jeffrey Goh, CEO of Star Alliance, adding “I do so on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of dedicated employees of the 26 member airlines of the Alliance, who work tirelessly to provide an unparalleled customer travel experience.” He went on the say, “In a very trying year when our collective commitment has turned to providing passenger health and hygiene safety throughout their flight, we are finding ways to further innovate along the passenger journey through new contactless travel initiatives such as the recent launch of Star Alliance Biometrics at Frankfurt and Munich Airports, and solutions to address new frictions to a seamless journey experience.” <br/>
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Lufthansa will expand its Christmas flight schedule after a surge in bookings from German tourists, a rare piece of good news for the carrier as it battles to recover from the coronavirus crisis. Lufthansa will add flights to southern European destinations including in Greece, Italy and Spain to meet the rising demand, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The airline will also reactivate routes to major cities to carry expatriates back to their homelands over the festive period. A surge in bookings marks a glimmer of light at the end of a gloomy year for Lufthansa, which took a E9b government bailout in June. The carrier said a month ago it needs to double operations from current levels if it’s to stem losses, having reduced capacity to 25% of year-ago traffic. The extra demand for European travel comes after countries including the UK and Italy said they’d temporarily loosen lockdown rules to allow families to gather during the holiday season. Still, Lufthansa faces an arduous winter as Europe fights a resurgence of coronavirus infections about a year after the pandemic originated in China. <br/>
South Africa is looking to raise about $400m from the sale of a stake in its bankrupt national airline, according to people familiar with the situation, a plan likely to lower the chances of finding a partner to aid its revival. The funds would be used to re-capitalize the reformed SAA, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information hasn’t been made public. The government is banking on SAA attracting interest because it holds some lucrative routes and valuable landing slots, such as at London’s Heathrow Airport, they said. The Treasury referred questions to the Department of Public Enterprises, which didn’t respond to requests for comment. South Africa’s search for a buyer of equity in SAA comes at a time when the aviation industry is mired in the biggest crisis in its history, having been laid low by the Covid-19 pandemic. Although Ethiopian Airlines Group has said it would consider a deal for SAA, CEO Tewolde GebreMariam has made clear he’s not interested in investing capital. Ethiopian is still interested in SAA “but the process is slow as it is complex,” the CEO said in a response to queries last week. The South African government is also in talks with Fairfax Africa Holdings Corp. about buying a stake in the airline, the Financial Mail reported on Thursday, without saying how it got the information. <br/>
South Africa’s Department of Public Enterprises has paid 1.5b rand ($98m) to the administrators of the bankrupt national airline, but it can’t be used because they say the conditions imposed breach labor and companies regulation. South African Airways, which was placed under administration in December last year, hasn’t flown since March and its business rescue plan details a hierachy of payments including severance packages for dismissed workers. Labor union members are currently demonstrating because they haven’t been paid. “The conditions that were stipulated for how it should be spent are in contravention of both the Labour Relations Act and the Chapter 6 of Companies Act,” the administrators said in a statement sent to Bloomberg, “So, we are unable to utilize the funds until the conditions have been amended.” Under South Africa’s companies act when a firm is placed under so-called business rescue advisers are the first to be paid, followed by secured creditors and employees for work done during the business rescue period.<br/>
SAS says it has registered the biggest loss in the company’s history, due to a loss of trade resulting from the coronavirus. The company’s results from November 2019 to October 2020 show a loss of 9.3b Swedish kronor (E907m). The results were published early on Thursday. In the previous accounting year, from November 2018 to October 2019, SAS posted a profit of 0.6b kronor (E58m). Covid-19 is the primary reason for the disastrous annual result, CEO Rickard Gustafson said. “SAS is naturally no exception (from the coronavirus crisis), and our revenues in the current quarter and accounting year were badly affected by the ongoing pandemic,” Gustafson said. Although demand improved during the summer, the return of high levels of infection spread in September and October and subsequent travel restrictions impacted the company.<br/>
SAS has shifted deliveries of a pair of Airbus A350-900s due to arrive in the current fiscal year, shifting them to fiscal years 2022 and 2023 instead. It has also deferred introduction of eight Airbus A320neos, pushing back the delivery of two batches of four aircraft each by a couple of years – one batch to fiscal 2024 and the other to fiscal 2025. But the arrival of two remaining Airbus A321LRs, due in fiscal 2021, has not been changed. “We worked hard during crisis to manage timing of deliveries,” says new SAS CFO Magnus Ornberg, recruited from Saab in October. “This will reduce our capital expenditure need for 2021-24.” Ornberg added that the changes will mean the carrier is “better aligned” to the recovery in demand.<br/>
United expects to be the first airline to receive a Boeing 737 MAX delivery following a 20-month grounding of the jet, a spokesman said Thursday. The delivery should take place next week, he said. United expects to receive eight new 737 MAX jets this month.<br/>
Air New Zealand is adding more capacity to its domestic schedule for Christmas, using bigger aircraft for three weeks on 350 flights as the demand for travel exceeds expectations. The airline is upgauging existing A320 services to A321 aircraft from Monday, December 7, until the end of December, adding 16,000 seats. This means about 80% of Auckland-Wellington services and about 25% of Auckland-Christchurch services will be operated by the new and larger A321 aircraft with 214 seats compared to the A320's 171. Air NZ, which this week came under fire for some high fares on commuter flights, said 550,000 seats will be available for under $100 for travel between December and February.<br/>Air NZ's chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said the upgauge was due to better-than-expected pre-Christmas and business travel demand. The airline has been running at about 75% of its pre-Covid domestic schedule and this will further boost that. Around the world, few domestic markets are running at such high capacity with the exception of China, which this month had slightly more domestic capacity than at the same time last year, according to OAG.<br/>